Friday, May 11, 2007

Tax revenue at highest levels...as is government spending

According to the MSM, Bush gets no credit for the tax revenues, but he gets blamed for the record spending. From the AP:

Federal revenue collections hit an all-time high in April, contributing to a further improvement in the budget deficit for the year.Releasing its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Thursday that through the first seven months of this budget year, the deficit totals $80.8 billion, significantly below the $184.1 billion imbalance run up during the first seven months of the 2006 budget year.

So far this year, tax revenues total $1.505 trillion, an increase of 11.2 percent over the same period last year. That figure includes $383.6 billion collected in April, the largest monthly tax collection on record.

Tax collections swell in April every year as individuals file their tax returns by the deadline.

Note the little disclaimer there? Tax collections "swell every April", so don't read anything into it, right? Well, they still "swelled" to record highs, right?

Before I get accused of leading some Dubya cheerleading brigade here, this also needs to be pointed out:

For the first seven months of this budget year, which began Oct. 1, revenue collections and government spending are at all-time highs.

However, the spending total of $1.585 trillion was up at a slower pace of 3.2 percent from the previous year.

The spending total may be up at a slower pace, but it's still up...and way too high, too. The feds are still spending about $80 billion more than they're taking in. If I tried that, I'm pretty sure my bank would be calling me up post haste.

The AP ends up contradicting itself in this paragraph:

...But the 2001 recession, the cost of fighting a global war on terror and the loss of revenue from President Bush's tax cuts sent the budget back into the red starting in 2002.

Didn't they just get done telling us that revenues were at an all-time high? They didn't attribute the revenue increase to the tax cuts, but they darned sure attributed the red ink to the tax cuts, now didn't they? Economic ignorance or media bias? You be the judge.

At any rate, let's not ignore the obvious here: tax cuts have increased the money coming in to the government, and the spend-happy Bush and Republican Party (when they ran the legislature) spent all that money and then some. Republicans they are, conservatives they are not.

That's like your boss giving you a Christmas bonus of $10,000 and you go spend it on a down payment on a $50,000 car. You had an extra $10k that you managed to turn into a $40k debt. Of course, if you're a liberal, you blame the debt on the Christmas bonus (or your boss for giving you the bonus) instead of how you spent it.

About Me

I am not conservative or Republican. I am a "neo-libertarian." It’s more logically consistent than conservatism and liberalism.
Liberals are not evil; however, their ideology has proven to be a demonstrable failure and incredibly harmful when administered on the body politic.
I have lived in the South all of my life. While I'd love to travel, I don't want to live anywhere else. Though I currently live near Jacksonville, FL, I call Memphis home (lived there most of my life). I'm a Florida State University Seminole, through and through.
All viewpoints are welcome on my blog. However, if I ban you or edit/delete your comments, it's because I found you to be offensive, repulsive, or otherwise useless. My world, my rules. Deal with it, or beat it.
Finally, I had a happy childhood, so my worldview has NOT been "warped" by a lousy upbringing. Quite the contrary: I have been blessed, and my outlook has been molded accordingly. I won't apologize for having grown up in a loving, middle-class family.